


they might be monsters

by quicheand



Series: monsters [1]
Category: K-pop, SHINee
Genre: Boyband, Canon Related, Gen, Secret Identities, mafia, taemin is evil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-08
Updated: 2011-01-08
Packaged: 2018-05-17 14:43:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5874622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicheand/pseuds/quicheand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing is, during the day, Taemin just acts like a normal teenage boy; no sign of the cold-hearted murderer Jonghyun had first met that night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	they might be monsters

 

◦◦◦◦◦

 

"Are you scared?" asks Jonghyun, ten minutes before their first performance.

Key shoots him a look. "Of course I am—are you stupid?" he says.

Jonghyun bites his lip and looks down. He fidgets for a moment, then says quietly, "I never imagined that things would turn out like this." Key doesn't say anything, so Jonghyun continues: "I thought I'd live a normal life—you know, finish high school, get a job somewhere, rent an apartment. That kind of thing. I mean, if you told me I'd be here instead, that I'd be singing songs and getting filmed and working for—"

Key grabs his arm suddenly, right above the elbow, and makes hurried shushing noises. Jonghyun looks up at Key's face, then follows Key's gaze to see Taemin coming toward them.

"Hi," says Taemin, coming to a stop in front of them. He's grinning, eyes bright and crinkling up at the corners; with his hair in its new bowlcut, he looks every inch the innocent maknae he's supposed to be. Key drops Jonghyun's arm, and they straighten up, mumble nervous greetings back to Taemin.

Taemin frowns; Jonghyun holds his breath. He can feel Key tense up next to him, and knows he's doing the same.

"This won't do," says Taemin. Jonghyun wants to glance at Key, see if he's looking as scared as Jonghyun feels, but he doesn't dare—he doesn't take his eyes off Taemin. Taemin tilts his head to one side, purses his lips as he looks the two of them up and down, considering.

"You're standing much too stiffly—it's suspicious," he says. "Slouch more," he says. "Act normal—and smile."

Jonghyun turns his head slowly to look at Key, who's looking back at him. Taemin crosses his arms and starts tapping his foot; Jonghyun and Key both turn back to him at the sound. Taemin's still smiling faintly, but there's something sharp behind it. Jonghyun swallows hard and then shifts his weight onto one foot, puts one hand in his pocket. He tries to remember what it feels like to smile, and moves his face accordingly, although he's pretty sure he's much too nervous for it to be effective.

It seems to appease Taemin though, and he grins broadly, showing off two rows of straight, white teeth. "Much better!" he exclaims. "Now come on and don't stand off to the side just the two of you—we're supposed to be a group of five, you know." He nods slightly toward the stage entrance, where Onew and Minho are standing, watching them; they turn around quickly and pretend to be engaged in conversation as Taemin shifts his gaze towards them.

One of the staff rushes over. "Hurry it up, guys," she says. She pushes Jonghyun and Key gently in the direction Taemin had just be indicating. "You should be over there, ready to go on in four minutes." She pauses, looks at Taemin. Then she grins. "Aww, you're so cute!" she exclaims, reaching a hand out to ruffle his hair. Taemin beams. Jonghyun and Key exchange dark glances. Jonghyun shudders.

 

◦◦◦◦◦

 

This is how Jonghyun gets dragged into this mess: he's walking home by himself late at night, and he takes a shortcut through a somewhat shady and sparsely inhabited part of town. Suddenly as he's passing the opening of a small alley, he hears a gunshot ring out.

Looking back, Jonghyun thinks regretfully that he should have just run at that point, just taken off and started running the rest of the way home—but it doesn't happen that way. Somehow, his feet are glued to the floor, and he's just standing there, looking down the dark alleyway. He can make out the shape of a tall, muscular man in a suit, and another figure, someone small and slender. A kid. At first Jonghyun thinks the kid's being threatened, and he wonders briefly if he should go and help him, but he can't seem to move, and then the next moment it doesn't matter anyway: the kid turns suddenly and sees Jonghyun. He points and says something Jonghyun can't hear, and then the man next to him is moving, striding briskly and purposefully down the grimy path toward Jonghyun.

Jonghyun still can't run. He sees something dark and shiny in the man's grip—a gun, he thinks—and he still can't manage to move his legs.

The man in the suit reaches Jonghyun, shoves the gun up against his ribcage, and grabs the collar of his shirt. Jonghyun finds himself being dragged down the alley, until finally they're standing in front of the kid.

The kid's looking coolly down his nose at him, one eyebrow raised slightly. The man in the suit gives Jonghyun a final shove forward. Jonghyun's foot goes out, so that he won't fall on his face on the mud-covered asphalt, and it hits something. Jonghyun looks down, and then he jumps backwards.

There's someone lying there. It's a middle-aged man clutching a briefcase. He's staring unseeingly up at the dark sky, mouth open in shock. A dark spot stains his shirt, radiating out from a hole in his chest.

"Oh my god," Jonghyun chokes out. "Oh my god." He can't seem to look away from the body. He tries to back away, but the man with the gun is standing there, blocking him.

"You've seen something you shouldn't have seen," the kid says in an aloof voice. Jonghyun tears his eyes away from the man on the ground and looks up at the kid. He leans back against the wall, examines his fingernails. "Do you know what we do to people who've seen things they shouldn't?"

The sound of a gun cocking comes from being Jonghyun, and he freezes, stiff with fear. "Oh my god," he says again, only this time it comes out as a barely audible whisper. Something hard and cool presses into Jonghyun's back. He squeezes his eyes shut and thinks about all the bad things he's ever done, racking his brains and wondering which of them was so bad that he deserved this as punishment.

"Wait." Jonghyun opens his eyes again. The kid shifts his balance, so that he's standing upright. He steps forward until he's standing only inches away from Jonghyun; he looks so young up close—he couldn't be more than thirteen or fourteen years old, and Jonghyun thinks wildly how wrong it is for a middle-school kid to be involved in things like this, to be ordering people killed in shaded alleyways in a bad part of town.

The kid reaches out and lifts Jonghyun's chin; his fingers are cold, and Jonghyun lifts his head higher, trying to escape the cool touch, but there's only so far he can go, and in the end the effort is wasted. The kid inspects Jonghyun for a minute, peering carefully at his face, turning his head this way and that. Finally, he lets go and steps back.

"Let him go," he says in a commanding voice. Then his voice drops down into something smoother, something conspiring and slightly wicked that sends chills down Jonghyun's spine:

"We can use him."

 

◦◦◦◦◦

 

The kid’s name is Lee Taemin, Jonghyun learns, and he is the son of the most influential underground crime boss in Korea. He does what he wants and disposes of those who get in his way—except that lately, the police have been sniffing around, getting suspicious.

Taemin has a plan to get them off his trail, but he needs Jonghyun, he says. He offers Jonghyun a choice: work for Taemin, do whatever Taemin tells him to, no questions asked, or lose his life right there. And that really isn’t a choice at all, so Jonghyun says yes—yes, he’ll work for Taemin, yes, he’ll do whatever he’s asked.

Taemin lets him go then, but not without a warning: “We’ll be watching you, so don’t try anything.” Jonghyun makes it home, brushes off his parents questions, and stumbles up to his room. He flips his cell phone open and closed, wondering if he should call the police—but when he happens to glance out the window, he sees an ominous looking black van parked across the street, and he snaps the phone shut; it hits him suddenly that Taemin really does have the power he claims he has, and Jonghyun isn’t going to take risks, not in this situation, not when his life is at stake. Instead, he strips down to his boxer shorts and climbs into bed. He pulls the covers up to his chin and stares up at the ceiling; it’s a long time before the fear backs off enough for him to close his eyes and fall asleep.

 

◦◦◦◦◦

 

The next morning, two men show up on Jonghyun’s doorstep. Jonghyun is eating cereal in the kitchen, and he doesn’t think much of it when the doorbell rings and his mother goes to answer it. It’s not until he hears a deep voice saying, “We’re here to collect Kim Jonghyun,” that he remembers the events from the night before, and he leaps to his feet, runs out of the kitchen. He pauses in the hallway, torn between running upstairs to hide and running to the door to protect his mother from those—from Taemin’s men.

In the end, the decision is made for him when one of the men spots him, and calls out his name. Jonghyun turns slowly, caught, and stands there frozen for a moment before heading toward them.

“What is going on?” asks his mother. Jonghyun doesn’t answer, just stares at the ground, at the shiny black shoes the men on the doorstep are wearing; at his silence, his mother sighs exasperatedly, says, “Jonghyun, did you do something again? How many times have I told you to straighten yourself out? Is this about vandalism at school again?”

Jonghyun is not sure how to answer, is not sure how much he is allowed to say, and just looks up at the the men instead. One of them places a hand on Jonghyun’s shoulder, pulls him out to stand in front of them; now it’s the three of them on the front stoop, and Jonghyun’s mother standing in her apron and bare feet on the wood floor inside.

“Your son has been recruited by a prestigious entertainment company,” says the shorter of the two men, the one who’s not gripping Jonghyun’s shoulder. He hands Jonghyun’s mother a business card. “You may call this number with any questions.” He gives a slight bow and turns. The other man turns as well, steering Jonghyun in front of him; Jonghyun looks straight forward as he walks, trying his best to ignore the calls of confusion from his mother behind him.

 

◦◦◦◦◦

 

Taemin’s plan is, apparently, to form a boyband. Jonghyun doesn’t understand completely; he just sits in a row with three other boys and listens to Taemin explaining his idea to them. Taemin is smiling brightly and gesturing excitedly, moving around while he talks; it’s a complete reversal of the cool, calculating Taemin from the night before. If he weren’t talking about murder and extortion and evading the police, Jonghyun would almost think he was just a normal boy.

They’re going to become famous, Taemin tells them. They’re going to get so famous that no one would even dare suggest that Taemin was anything other than the innocent youngest member of a five-person boy group—it’ll be ridiculous, Taemin explains happily, to bring up accusations against someone whose life is so well-publicized in the media, and who is so beloved by fangirls all over the country.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a while,” Taemin says. “I think it’d be great fun—and don’t you think it would be funny, all those girls treating me like an innocent middle-school student with the face of an angel?” He bats his eyelashes twice, then laughs at his own comment. Jonghyun and the other three boys exchange uneasy glances.

It’s decided that very day. The papers are drawn up, the appropriate media sources contacted, and then it’s official: Jonghyun—along with the boys whose names he learns are Jinki, Minho, and Kibum—will be part of a boy group of Taemin’s creation—luxury idols, contemporary band SHINee.

 

◦◦◦◦◦

 

It’s awkward at first, as expected. The part that comes as a surprise to Jonghyun is that, somehow, after a few weeks, they start to get used to it.

They stop being scared of Taemin after a while—sooner than Jonghyun expected.

The thing is, during the day, Taemin just acts like a normal teenage boy; no sign of the cold-hearted murderer Jonghyun had first met that night. In part, it’s an act, put on in order to become the role of the SHINee maknae; but it’s also, Jonghyun thinks, Taemin’s natural personality being allowed to come through.

Jonghyun knows they should be wary around Taemin, and he knows the others know too. Somehow, though, it’s hard to remember that when Taemin is always beaming his sunny smile and blinking his wide eyes innocently at them.

Jinki—who now goes by Onew—is the first to lose sight of Taemin’s sinister lifestyle. It’s only a couple of weeks before Jonghyun starts catching him smiling back softly when Taemin grins at him. They all smile back, of course, after Taemin tells them to, but Onew’s is different: it’s a sweet, sincere smile, nothing like the stiff, forced smiles the others shoot back at their maknae. Jonghyun catches them singing together one day. They’re sitting cross-legged on the floor of their dorm’s living room, Taemin singing quietly and Onew adding the harmonies, and then they stop, and Taemin murmurs something, batting his eyelashes just slightly, and Onew laughs affectionately.

Jonghyun feels torn between disgust that Onew could forget so quickly who Taemin really is, how Taemin forced them into this with threats and intimimdation, and something he can only describe as a confused sort of envy. He doesn’t understand why, but he wishes he could be that comfortable around Taemin too. He wishes he could talk and laugh and sing with Taemin, instead of this constant fear that tugs at his chest whenever Taemin looks his way.

Jonghyun isn’t sure when Minho started growing comfortable around Taemin, but he supposes it must be linked to the way Minho started out quiet, almost unnaturally shy, and got more talkative as time went by. Minho still doesn’t talk as much as most people, but when he sees the way Minho’s eyes start to light up when he smiles at Taemin, Jonghyun guesses that Minho will lose the rest of his shyness as he gets closer to the younger boy.

Jonghyun is right. It turns out that Minho is actually quite loud and outgoing by nature, and his raucous laughter and garrulousness start appearing around the same time that he starts casually bumping shoulders with Taemin whenever he passes by, or wrapping his around around Taemin’s shoulders to squeeze his arm. Jonghyun’s a little startled, both at Minho’s sudden change in personality and the way Taemin has now managed to worm his way into two members’ hearts, despite the dark reality of his past.

Key is the one member of their group that Jonghyun’s the closest to. He doesn’t know why; somehow, they just clicked, at the very beginning, on the first day Taemin brought them together. There are things Jonghyun doesn’t tell the other members, that he’s afraid to bring up with him, but it’s easy to talk to Key about them. It’s easy to murmur to him the things they’re afraid to speak aloud, for fear that Taemin will overhear and punish them. It’s easy to talk quietly to Key when the two of them get a moment alone, and then stop and paste smiles on their faces when Taemin walks by.

But even Key, eventually, falls into easy affection for Taemin. It shocks Jonghyun the first time he sees Key laugh and exclaim, “Aigoo, my son!” while ruffling Taemin’s hair. He stares hard at Key, but Key doesn’t notice, caught up in teasing their ostensibly adorable maknae, and Jonghyun can’t help feeling betrayed.

But soon after that, things start to click into place for Jonghyun. It’s not like he ever makes a conscious decision about it, but little by little, Jonghyun finds himself relaxing more around Taemin, feeling more comfortable and not having to overthink his every action. Gradually, he stops wondering whether everything he says to Taemin is acceptable, whether or not Taemin, beneath his compliant smile, he’s secretly plotting revenge on Jonghyun for having the audacity to say such a thing. Gradually, as if his subconscious has decided that, if Key can accept Taemin, then he can too, Jonghyun stops thinking of Taemin as being dangerously volatile and starts thinking of him more like a younger brother.

 

◦◦◦◦◦

 

Jonghyun wakes up one night and isn’t sure why. He lies there for a minute, then gets up and heads to the kitchen for a drink of water.

The light in the kitchen is off, but the light in the hallway is on, and the glow filtering in through the doorway illuminates a slim figure standing by the running sink.

“Taemin?” Jonghyun asks from the doorway, his voice crackling slightly from sleep.

Taemin turns—not all the way, but it’s enough. Jonghyun gasps: the front of Taemin’s shirt is covered with blood. Dark red has drenched the bottom half of the shirt, and a single bloody handprint extends up, fingers splayed over Taemin’s chest. Taemin’s arms are bloody as well, and when Jonghyun takes a step toward him, the light from the hall glints off the something metallic that Taemin’s washing in the sink—a knife, Jonghyun realizes with a start.

“Sorry, hyung,” says Taemin, giving a slight smile. “I know you don’t like to see me like this.”

Jonghyun steps forward the rest of the way toward Taemin. He reaches out to touch the bloodied hem of Taemin’s shirt, but changes his mind halfway and pulls his hand back again. “What—what happened?” he asks, faintly. “Are you alright?”

Taemin turns back toward the sink, back toward the blade of the knife he’s rinsing in the water that streams from the faucet. “It’s not mine,” he says. “I had to take care of some business.”

Jonghyun feels sick all of a sudden. He stumbles backwards, bumps into a chair and sends it skidding back a few inches with a clatter. Taemin looks up, eyes wide, questioning. Jonghyun shakes his head, staggers backwards again, hands outstretched behind him until he feels the edge of the doorframe beneath his fingers. Taemin’s still looking at him; there’s something in his eyes that Jonghyun thinks might be pity, might be sadness. Jonghyun tears his eyes away from Taemin, away from all the blood, and, still shaking his head (though he doesn’t know why), he turns and bolts from the room.

He ends up in the bathroom, crouched in front of the toilet, head in his hands.

He’d forgotten. It’s been a long time since Taemin’s let any of the others see traces of his other life, of what he gets up to at night sometimes after the others have all gone to bed. Jonghyun knew in theory, of course, that SHINee was just a front for Taemin’s sake, to cover up all the things Taemin does, but somewhere along the way, he’d gotten used to the idol life, he supposes; somewhere along the way, he’d put the darker side of everything out of his mind and just started having fun being a singer, being on TV and performing on stage and living the life of a celebrity.

Of course it’s still like this, he thinks now. Of course—how could he forget?—they’re still just here because Taemin brought them here; SHINee exists only for Taemin’s sake.

Jonghyun breathes out shakily and gets to his feet. He shouldn’t be shocked, he tells himself as he brushes his teeth. He shouldn’t have this kind of reaction to seeing sweet, innocent Taemin with a knife, wearing a blood-soaked shirt. There is no sweet, innocent Taemin, after all—it’s all an act; Jonghyun can’t let himself forget that again.

 

◦◦◦◦◦

 

He forgets again anyway.

◦◦◦◦◦

Taemin had warned them from the beginning that SHINee might dissolve at any time, that they existed for the sole purpose of creating an image for him to hide behind, and that, once they failed to serve that purpose, it’d all be over. But even knowing that, Jonghyun, and Onew and Key and Minho too—they all convinced themselves that it wouldn’t be over for a long time, that they would just keep on being idols, being SHINee, for—if not forever, at least for many years to come.

It ends suddenly; Jonghyun thinks maybe that’s fitting, for it to end the same way it started.

One night, Taemin doesn’t come home with them. They don’t think anything of it; Taemin often has things he has to do late at night, after they’re done being SHINee for the day.

It’s not until the next morning, when they’re getting ready to go for a photoshoot and Taemin still isn’t back, that anyone starts feeling uneasy.

They call Taemin’s cell phone, but there’s no answer. They wait for him until they can’t wait anymore, and then they go off to the photoshoot without him. They don’t talk as they get their hair and makeup done, as they get changed into the brightly colored vests and jeans they’re given; still, as Jonghyun looks around at his group members, he knows they’re all thinking the same thing: where is Taemin, and what has he done?

There’s something wrong. The staff give them worried glances and whisper things Jonghyun can’t quite catch. They’re all dressed, and the photographer is waiting, but they’re not starting, they’re not doing anything—they’re just waiting. The staff confers quietly in a corner of the room, and then one frazzled looking woman stands and strides quickly out of the room, dialing a number on her cell phone. She comes back a few minutes later, shrugs her shoulders in answer to the others’ worried, questioning looks, and stands anxiously by the wall.

The photographer looks impatient. He doesn’t know what’s going on, and he doesn’t care, Jonghyun thinks.

Onew bites at his lip and keeps checking his phone for messages. Every time he looks down at the screen, his hair falls into his eyes, and he blows at it absently. Minho gets out of his chair and starts pacing anxiously, back and forth, back and forth across the floor. Beside Jonghyun, Key alternates between sighing worriedly and tugging at the sides of his hair, compulsively smoothing down the dyed strands, even though they’re already perfectly in place.

Ten minutes pass by, and then the door opens. A tall woman in a severe looking suit strides in. She speaks to the photographer, who scowls and mutters and starts packing up his equipment, then to the staff, who are still huddled in the corner. They talk for a couple of minutes; Jonghyun strains to hear what they’re saying, but can’t make anything out.

Finally, the woman comes over to them.

“What’s going on?” asks Key.

“Where’s Taemin?” asks Onew.

“Taemin has left the country,” the woman says. There’s a chorus of “What’s?” followed by a series of “Why’s?” but if Jonghyun is being honest with himself, none of them really sound that surprised.

“Something has happened, and it is no longer safe for Taemin to be here,” says the woman. “It’s not certain whether it will ever be possible for him to return.” Jonghyun exchanges glances at Key, looks over at Onew and Minho. Minho is looking straight at the woman, his mouth pressed into a line. Onew is looking down at his lap, eyebrows furrowed in something like worry, or sadness, or regret.

The woman continues, without a trace of emotion: “Since Taemin isn’t here anymore, there’s no need for SHINee to exist. SHINee will be disbanded, and you will each return to your normal lives.”

A murmur of confusion passes between all four of them. Jonghyun lets out a short, biting laugh. “What normal lives?” he says, sharply. He gave up his normal life long ago—was forced to give it up—when he was recruited into this idol lifestyle, at Taemin’s command. Now that’s it’s over, what else can he do? He’s lost touch with all of his old friends, not that any of them probably turned out to be anything useful, and he doesn’t have any useful skills. He never even graduated high school. He knows the others are in similar predicaments.

The woman doesn’t seem to care. She shrugs one shoulder. “It’s not my job to see that you get settled back into the normal world,” she says simply. “That’s for you to figure out.” And with that, she turns and walks out of the room again.

Jonghyun looks to the others; they look as lost as he feels.

“What are we supposed to do?” asks Key. He seems to be whispering to himself more than asking any of them to answer, but Jonghyun does anyway.

“I don’t know,” he says, “I don’t know.”

 

◦◦◦◦◦

 

It’s weird, perhaps, considering that they’ve spent every day together for the last four years, but after SHINee dissolves, they don’t see each other anymore.

Jonghyun moves back into his parents’ house. He ignores his mother’s questions: what happened to SHINee? why is he suddenly back here? where are Onew and Key, Minho and Taemin?

For the most part, Jonghyun stays in his room and watches TV. He watches dramas starring people he knows—people he used to know—and performances on music programs by groups from members of his company—his former company.

After a couple of weeks, his mom starts bursting in his room at sporadic intervals throughout the day, telling him to pick himself up and stop being a lazy good-for-nothing.

“You can’t just laze about like this your whole life, Kim Jonghyun,” she says, standing between him and the television. Jonghyun cranes his head around to catch a glimpse of SNSD dancing to their newest single on Music Core. His mother notices, and steps to the side so that his vision is blocked again, and he’s forced to look at her. “Stop moping around, Jonghyun,” she says. “I know that music stuff was important to you, but since it’s over now, you have get on with your life. Find some other plan for how you’re going to live. Some other career that you can be happy in.”

Jonghyun doesn’t know about happy, but he starts looking for a job anyway.

It’s hard, since he never finished high school, but eventually he manages to get hired at a grocery store. It’s a shit job, of course, but it makes sense, since he has shit lifeskills and shit general knowledge and just an overall shitty life. So he just resigns himself to days filled with scanning food packages and working the cash register and shelving boxes of cereal and cleanup on aisle four.

He wears a hat to work, and pulls the brim down nervously over his face whenever anyone gets that thoughtful look on their face, like they’re trying to think where they might have seen him before. Sometimes it works, and sometimes not. At first it bothers Jonghyun; he doesn’t want people to know he’s working at a supermarket now, doesn’t want them to think he’s fallen to this kind of life—but then, after a while, he stops caring. Because this _is_ his life now—he’s not famous anymore, he’s not part of that world anymore, he doesn’t have to watch his image and take care what people think of him anymore.

He moves out after a while, rents an apartment in the city. It’s not that impressive of a place, but even so, some months he has trouble paying the rent. Still, he gets by.

Eventually, it starts to fade—Jonghyun’s life as a member of a prominent boyband ceases to be his life and becomes nothing more than memories, someone he once was but no longer is. Months pass, then turn into years; people no longer stop Jonghyun on the street, no longer ask if he’s that guy from SHINee.

Kim Jonghyun is, finally, living a normal life, making his way through the world just like everyone else.

 

◦◦◦◦◦

 

Key looks different, yet the same as Jonghyun remembers him. His hair is a sensible dark brown, styled fashionably, but not in too drastic a cut. His clothes are impeccable and current, but nothing that attracts too much attention.

They’re having lunch together, seated outdoors at a quaint little cafe. Jonghyun has thought about calling Key often since SHINee broke up, has paused time and time again with his thumb poised over the call button, Key’s name highlighted on the screen of his cell phone, but in the end he never does; in the end, it’s Key who calls him.

Jonghyun drums his fingers on the cool surface of the wrought iron table as he studies Key’s features. Key looks older, but that’s to be expected—Jonghyun knows he must look older too. He is older, after all. They’re both older now.

“It’s weird,” says Key, pushing the food around on his plate. “It’s like it was all a dream, isn’t it?”

“Just like a dream,” agrees Jonghyun. He pauses, cocks his head to the side, thinking. “Or maybe a nightmare—sometimes, anyway.”

Key considers this for a moment, then nods. “Like one day we had this nightmare that this crazy kid with blood all over his hands made us into stars, except every morning when we woke up, we were still in that life.”

“And then it stopped being all bad at some point,” says Jonghyun. “Or we just stopped noticing the bad parts, and just got caught up in the idol part, in the—what do you call it?—the luxury of it all.”

“And then just when we got used to it, just when we’d accepted everything, all the strangeness, as being our lives—”

“—we woke up and found ourselves lost in the real world again,” finishes Jonghyun, and Key nods in agreement. They look at each other for a minute, lost in thought and in their memories, both good and bad.

“Have you talked to Onew or Minho?” asks Key after a while. Jonghyun shakes his head. “Me neither,” says Key. “Maybe it’s better that way.”

“I didn’t think I could handle it—seeing them, I mean,” says Jonghyun. He pauses. “To be honest, I didn’t think I could handle seeing you either.”

He’s worried for a split second that Key will take that in that wrong way, but then Key makes a vague sound of agreement and says, “I wasn’t sure either,” and Jonghyun forget why he was worried in the first place—why he was worried that Key, whom he’s always, always gotten along with, wouldn’t understand what he’d meant.

“I missed you though,” he says. Key smiles; after everything they’ve been through, it’s a slightly worn smile, but Jonghyun’s glad to see it has genuine happiness behind it too.

Later on, when they’ve both finished eating and are getting ready to leave, Key says, haltingly, “Have you—have you heard anything about Taemin?”

Jonghyun stops. Without meeting Key’s eyes, he says, “I—I heard a while back that he was in Thailand...but I don’t really know.”

Key is quiet for a minute; then he says, “Do you think he’ll ever come back?”

Jonghyun shudders, inwardly. “No,” he says, voice firm. He looks up at Key. “I don’t think so.”

Key nods. “I don’t think so either,” he says.

It’s not so much that they know it can’t happen, that Taemin really will never return to Korea or contact them again. It’s that things like that, like being dragged into a whole new life by such an improbable series of coincidences—things that like that can only happen once in a lifetime. That’s what Jonghyun tells himself, what he knows Key is telling himself.

It’s not so much that they know for sure Taemin’s gone for good. It’’s that they make themselves sure, like if they believe it enough, it’ll be true.

And it has to be true; that’s the only way they can handle it.

 

◦◦◦◦◦

 


End file.
